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Saturday, June 13, 2015

Easy to understand results

If you've used Clever Surveys before this post, you may notice a difference in prediction results. Previously, we presented predictions as probabilities. Problem is, these results were easy to misinterpret, and when there are many possible predictions, the results tend to squish together.

WoW: What is your favorite race results. Old scaling.

In an effort to make prediction results easier to interpret, we've stretched them out. Now, the top prediction always has a value of 100, and the bottom prediction gets divided by the number of possible predictions. We chose this method because it gives us the desired effect, without removing information about the bottom prediction.

WoW: What is your favorite race results. New scaling.

The probabilities themselves haven't changed. We're just presenting them differently. Now, it's easier to see little details in the results. When I look at my results for World of Warcraft races, I can see a hierarchy form. Worgen is way on top, followed by Gnome and Blood Elf. Then we have a tier containing Goblin, Troll, Night Elf, and Tauren. After that is a lower tier with Draenei, Human, Undead, Dwarf, and Pandaren. Lastly, and way below the previous tier, is Orc. This information was all there before, but I would have never noticed it without this change.

P.S. We also dropped the % sign. Most people probably don't care, but it feels weird to use the % sign if they're not actually percents.